Machines and Work Centers

A machine or work center is anywhere your shop does priced work: CNC mills and lathes, but also a welding station, a saw, an assembly bench or an inspection table. Each one holds the hourly rates its operations are priced at, and gets its own column on the production board.

Getting There

Go to Settings > Processes & Work Centers. Machines and work centers are added from the Processes tab; the Machines / work centers tab lists them all.

Adding a Machine or Work Center

Machines and work centers are created from within a manufacturing process, because their rates (cost per hour, markup, selling rate) belong to the process they perform.

  1. Go to Settings > Processes & Work Centers.
  2. On the Processes tab, find the process (for example, "CNC Milling").
  3. Click Add machine / work center at the bottom of that process card.
  4. Choose New machine / work center, or Existing machine / work center to attach one that another process already uses.
  5. Enter:
    • Name or model: what you call it ("Haas VF-2", "Assembly bench").
    • Color: the color of its avatar on the production board.
    • Lights-out machining: check this if the machine can run unattended after hours (used for scheduling).
  6. Optionally, fill in its Capabilities (see below).
  7. Set its hourly rates for this process (see below).
  8. Click Save.

Capabilities

Capabilities tell Forge AI what each machine can do, so that when it proposes a routing it puts each operation on a machine that can actually make the part. Every field is optional; leave a work center such as an assembly bench empty.

| Field | What to enter | |-------|---------------| | Type | Lathe, mill / machining center, turn-mill, grinder, EDM, manual work center or other. The form then shows only the fields that type uses. | | Axes | The number of controlled axes (3 for a 3-axis mill, 5 for a 5-axis). | | Live tooling | Whether a lathe has driven tools in its turret. Forge AI keeps cross holes, flats and slots on a turned part on a lathe with live tooling instead of adding a milling operation. | | Max turning Ø / length | The largest diameter and length the lathe can turn. | | X / Y / Z travel | The machine's axis travels, which bound the part it can take. | | Notes | Anything else that matters for routing, such as bar capacity or a twin spindle. |

Sizes are shown in your own unit system (inches or millimetres, set in your account preferences); Forge stores them in millimetres, so every user sees them in their own units.

When Forge AI proposes a routing, it never puts a part on a machine whose recorded size is smaller than the part's stock, as long as another machine in that process fits. A machine without recorded sizes is treated as able to take any part.

Filling capabilities from the model name

Type the machine's make and model in Name or model (for example "Haas VF-2") and click Fill from model. Forge AI searches the web for the model's published specifications, ideally the manufacturer's or a dealer's spec sheet, and fills in the capability fields it finds. The search can take up to half a minute.

  • It only fills the values it is sure of. Anything it cannot find stays empty, and anything you already entered is kept.
  • When the values come from web pages, a Sources list under the capabilities links to those pages, so you can check the figures against them.
  • For a well-known model it may answer from what it already knows, without searching. There is no Sources list then.
  • If it does not recognize the model, it says so and fills nothing.
  • Nothing is saved until you click Save, so check the values first.

Tip: Type the exact model as the maker writes it (for example "Nakamura-Tome MX-100" rather than "Nakamura"). For a machine with several turrets or slides, Forge AI fills the figures of the main one; enter the others in Notes if they matter for routing.

Rates

Each machine or work center has three rate phases in each process:

  • Programming: time spent writing or setting up the program.
  • Setup: time spent fixturing, tooling and preparing the machine for a run.
  • Cycle: the time per part.

For each phase, you set:

| Field | Description | |-------|-------------| | Cost/hr | Your internal cost for this work (what an hour actually costs you). | | Markup % | The percentage added on top of cost. | | Rate/hr | The selling rate, calculated from cost and markup. This is the rate used on quotes. |

When you add an operation to a quote part and pick this process and machine, Forge uses these rates to price the operation.

Tip: The same machine can have different rates in different processes. A CNC mill might have one rate for milling and another for drilling.

Important: A process with no machine or work center has nowhere to hold a rate, so its operations are priced at $0. Forge shows a warning on such a process. Add at least a work center (an "Assembly bench" or "Inspection table", for example) to every process you quote.

Viewing All Machines and Work Centers

The Machines / work centers tab lists every active machine and work center in your shop, with its color avatar and the processes it is linked to.

Archiving a Machine or Work Center

If you retire a machine, archive it instead of deleting it:

  1. Go to the Machines / work centers tab.
  2. Click the archive icon on its card.
  3. Confirm.

Archiving removes it from every linked process and hides it from the production board. Archived machines do not appear in dropdowns when you create new work orders.

Note: If the machine is linked to processes, Forge tells you how many before you confirm.

How Machines Connect to Production

Once your machines and work centers are set up:

  • When you create work orders for a job, you assign each work order to a machine or work center.
  • The production board shows a column for each one, with its queued, in-progress and completed work orders.
  • Shop floor managers use the production board to see what each machine is working on and drag work orders to reorder the queue.

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